When you were 18 and finishing school …

I spotted this on an American blogger’s site (thanks Ally) and whilst I was schooled in England and where we just have ‘School’ rather than ‘High School’, I thought it’d be fun to give them a go.

Think about your final year in (High) School (the one when you were 17/18). The longer ago it was, the more fun the answers will be!

1. Did you know your current significant other? No. We met on a dating site when we were both in our fifties. We’d each been around the (romantic) block a few times by then.
2. Make and year of car? I didn’t own a car until I was 25 and certainly wasn’t permitted a car in boarding school. I hitchhiked a fair bit that final year – yeah, I know …
3. What kind of job? No job. I attended a boarding school while my parents worked overseas and it wasn’t permitted. My first job was as a temporary secretary after I finished secretarial training aged 19.
4. Where did you live? During school holidays I returned to my parents who were based in Bangladesh where we lived in a bungalow just outside of the capital’s centre. During term time I was a boarder at a school for 16-18 year olds, which was based in an old manor house in the English countryside.
5. Were you popular? I had friends but wasn’t part of the ‘in crowd’.
6. Were you in choir? Not at this school. At my previous school, I was. Their concert hall had amazing accoustics and singing was a serious business there. To get into the choir you had to attend an audition, sing unaccompanied and be able to sight read.
7. Ever get suspended from school? Yes, of course I did 🙂  I was a teenager with attitude.  At a boarding school they can’t suspend you, so I have the reverse – I got grounded – so I wasn’t allowed to leave the school grounds when other boarders were.
8. If you could, would you go back? That final year was OK I guess, but previously school was hell. I’d go to University in a heartbeat as a mature student, but school … no way.
9. Still talk to the person that you went to prom with? We didn’t have proms in England back then. I did go to a Ball at Sandhurst that final year, but no … I haven’t the faintest memory of him, not even his name.
10. Did you skip school? I skipped school to watch Wimbledon each year.
11. Go to all the football games? It was an all-girl school, so no football. My previous school was keen on team sports and had great facilities. But that final year, there were no sports facilites.
12. Favorite subject? English and Spanish.
13. Do you still have your yearbooks? We didn’t have yearsbooks and I can’t find any photographs from that time now either.
14. Did you follow the career path you planned? I had no career path planned. I was a catholic girl in the mid-1970s – unless you were uber intelligent and headed for Oxford or Cambridge Universities, the only acceptable paths were nursing or secretarial training. I became a secretary. Do I have regrets? You betcha.
15. Did you have a class ring? No, that’s not something we have in England either.
16. Still close with your best friend? No, although we did reconnect via Facebook recently.
17. Who was your favorite teacher? My Spanish teacher during that final year was really clever and charasmatic. Although teaching me Spanish, we used my language lessons to discuss English literature. The fact that I passed my English exams was entirely down to him.
18. What was your style? Jeans, desert boots and cheesecloth shirts. I also had a pair of bottle green suede trousers which I thought made me the bee’s knees. It was the 70s, what can I say …?
19. Favorite shoes? Those desert boots.
20. Favorite music? I liked folk and jazz, and I played classical guitar.
21. (High) school hair? Horribly long and frizzy. I didn’t have a good haircut until my 21st birthday. It transformed my life for which I thank my grandmother from the bottom of my heart.
22. What kind of cologne/perfume? I don’t remember wearing perfume then.
23. How old when graduated? 18 years old.
24. Did you play a sport? Not in that final year, but I’d previously played tennis and swam during the summer, while in the winter I avoided outdoor sports (hockey and netball), preferring judo and badminton. I was a good swimmer but pretty average at everything else.

Do you have memories from this time that you’d like to share?

© Debra Carey, 2019